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Your Tests and Reviews => Your Tests and Reviews => Topic started by: absic on June 12, 2011, 01:55:06 pm

Title: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 12, 2011, 01:55:06 pm: GA-990FXA-UD5 (Rev 1.0) Living Review

(http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/7766/990ud5001.jpg) (http://img854.imageshack.us/i/990ud5001.jpg/)
Gigabyte’s new GA-990FXA-UD5 motherboard has just been delivered to me and I have to say it looks pretty impressive. Detailed specifications can be found here: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3891&dl=1#sp so I won’t bore you with all those details. Suffice it to say that this board sports the new black colour scheme of Gigabyte’s higher end motherboards, is AM3+ ready, for when AMD releases the new Fusion FX (Bulldozer) CPU’s and has the latest 9 series chipsets from AMD. It also supports 3 way Crossfire and SLI support, something which hasn’t always been available on recent AMD motherboards.

The box is covered with the usual logos and is actually printed in a dark green colour (apologies for the poor photographs which make it look black).
(http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/8781/990ud5002.jpg) (http://img823.imageshack.us/i/990ud5002.jpg/)

(http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/9605/990ud5003.jpg) (http://img88.imageshack.us/i/990ud5003.jpg/)
When you open the box you find 4 black SATA leads, a 2 way and a 3 way SLI connector (if you use ATI Cards the Crossfire connectors usually come with the graphics card), User’s Manual, Quick Start manual, Backplate and a couple of stickers.

(http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/2195/990ud5004.jpg) (http://img822.imageshack.us/i/990ud5004.jpg/)
The motherboard itself looks very impressive. The Northbridge and Mosfet coolers are of a slotted design and are linked with a heatpipe to transfer heat more efficiently.

(http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/3422/990ud5005.jpg) (http://img825.imageshack.us/i/990ud5005.jpg/)
The AM3+ Socket is black and there is a new design for the Cooler bracket which now runs down 2 sides of the CPU rather than the large rectangular box design previously seen. Once, again, this design tweak is to aid cooling and to improve airflow around the CPU socket.

(http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/4102/990ud5006.jpg) (http://img803.imageshack.us/i/990ud5006.jpg/)
The first thing that I really did notice on this board is just how low the profile is for the Southbridge cooler. It is so low, in fact, that it actually sits below the SATA ports on the edge of the board.

(http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/5264/990ud5007.jpg) (http://img717.imageshack.us/i/990ud5007.jpg/)
The new design for the Mosfet Cooler has allowed for easier access to the 8 Pin 12V power connector socket.

(http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/7319/990ud5008.jpg) (http://img825.imageshack.us/i/990ud5008.jpg/)
OK first grumble coming up….. I know that Gigabyte have added a disclaimer with regard to the PCIEX1 socket stating that: “Due to a hardware limitation, the PCIEX1 slot can only accommodate a shorter PCI Express X1 Expansion card.” But, I tried to install a USB expansion card which I think is quite small, the distance from the back of the slot to the back of the card is only 17mm,

(http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/9813/990ud5009.jpg) (http://img12.imageshack.us/i/990ud5009.jpg/)
and this was too long. I’m not sure which PCIEX1 cards will actually fit this slot and it could be an issue for some users.

(http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/8923/990ud5012.jpg) (http://img853.imageshack.us/i/990ud5012.jpg/)
The SATA ports are placed on the right hand edge of the board. The 6 black ports are controlled by the AMD SB950 Chipset whilst the 2 grey ones are controlled by the Marvell 9172 Chipset.

(http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/4554/990ud5013.jpg) (http://img18.imageshack.us/i/990ud5013.jpg/)
The backpanel follows the standard layout and has a plethora of USB ports.

(http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/4585/990ud5014.jpg) (http://img198.imageshack.us/i/990ud5014.jpg/)
The headers for the front panel connections, Front Audio, USB, USB 3.0 Header, Firewire, etc, are placed along the lower edge of the board

(http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/671/990ud5010.jpg) (http://img146.imageshack.us/i/990ud5010.jpg/)
The back of the motherboard is clean and tidy and the backplate for the CPU cooler mount is made from black metal.
(http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/9813/990ud5011.jpg) (http://img94.imageshack.us/i/990ud5011.jpg/)

Unlike the GA-890FXA-UD5 that I have been using, this board lacks certain features. For example, there are no Power, Reset or Clear CMOS buttons. It also has only one LAN connector which although not a big issue to me, does make one wonder why they have not been included. This board also lack the Coaxial S/Pdif connector that the GA-890FXA-UD5 had, although it does retain the Optical S/Pdif output. Also, there is no longer an IDE or Floppy header, so this board is SATA only, if you have any older hardware that uses these connections you will have to replace them. So, there are same major changes with the hardware that this board packs over the GA-890FXA-UD5.

However, the inclusion of SLI support is something that many users will be pleased to see along with the new AMD 9 Series chipset. In some ways, at first glance, this board seems like a step backwards but, and it is a big but, this board has been designed for the new AMD AM3+ Fusion FX (Bulldozer) processors, when they come along and, as such, we shouldn’t be too critical of what seems to be lacking.

to be continued.....
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 12, 2011, 01:55:42 pm: So we have got our new motherboard and possible a lot of other new parts too. The usual thing to do is throw everything together, press the power button and pray. But, I have learnt the hard way that, although things will usually work if you do that, it is much better to add another step first. This is particularly important if you are not sure of what you are doing or if, as in this case, the motherboard is of a new design and there is nowhere to go if you run into problems!

The first thing I do now is lay all the parts out on a clean work area. Make sure you have all of the parts you are going to need so that you don’t have to rush around and find something.

(http://img857.imageshack.us/img857/2968/990ud5015.jpg) (http://img857.imageshack.us/i/990ud5015.jpg/)
As you will see from this image, I have a set of switches, HDD activity and Power lights and a small motherboard speaker. I use these as I have found them a real boon but you can use the connections from your PC Case, you’ll just need a little more space.

Place the motherboard on a cardboard box.
(http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/581/990ud5016.jpg) (http://img713.imageshack.us/i/990ud5016.jpg/)
The one the motherboard came in is ideal.

Mount the CPU and add a little thermal paste.
(http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/6726/990ud5017.jpg) (http://img151.imageshack.us/i/990ud5017.jpg/)
You only need a small amount of thermal paste, about a 3-5 mm bead. You don’t need to spread this out as the weight of the CPU cooler will do this for you.
The CPU should just drop into the socket and, if for any reason it doesn’t do so, do not try and force it in. First make sure that the lever at the side of the socket is raised. If it is and the CPU still won’t fit, carefully examine the pins of the processor as it is possible to bend these if you handle it roughly and that will stop it from just dropping into the socket.

Mount the CPU cooler and attach the CPU Fan lead to the CPU fan header on the motherboard.
(http://img862.imageshack.us/img862/3184/990ud5018.jpg) (http://img862.imageshack.us/i/990ud5018.jpg/)

Add one stick of RAM, make sure you put this in the first slot. You will need to check your User’s Manual for the correct slot and on this motherboard the first slot is now the one furthest away from the CPU rather than the one nearest to it.
(http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/3179/990ud5019.jpg) (http://img143.imageshack.us/i/990ud5019.jpg/)

Add your Graphic Card to the slot marked PCIEX16_1.
(http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/7936/990ud5020.jpg) (http://img197.imageshack.us/i/990ud5020.jpg/)

Connect the Power and Reset switches along with the motherboard speaker and Power LED, to the motherboard header. Again you need to refer to the User’s Manual for the correct configuration.
(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/7964/990ud5021.jpg) (http://img5.imageshack.us/i/990ud5021.jpg/)

Connect the 24 Pin ATX power lead.
(http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/3875/990ud5022.jpg) (http://img706.imageshack.us/i/990ud5022.jpg/)

And the 8 Pin ATX 12V connector.
(http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/733/990ud5023.jpg) (http://img710.imageshack.us/i/990ud5023.jpg/)

If your Graphic Card needs additional power make sure that you connect those lead(s) at this stage.

Connect the Monitor lead to the Graphic card and also plug in your keyboard.
(http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/9683/990ud5024.jpg) (http://img853.imageshack.us/i/990ud5024.jpg/)

You don’t need a mouse at this stage and, although I prefer to use a P/S2 keyboard you can use a USB one.

And that’s it we’re now ready to power up for the first time. Make sure that everything is switched on at the mains and that the power switch on the Power Supply is also switched on then press the Power Button. If everything is working as it should then you should hear a single beep from the motherboard speaker, the monitor should spring to life and you will see the Gigabyte Splash Screen appear.
(http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/4030/990ud5025.jpg) (http://img812.imageshack.us/i/990ud5025.jpg/)

Press the “Del” button on your keyboard and you will enter BIOS.
(http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/7362/990ud5026.jpg) (http://img42.imageshack.us/i/990ud5026.jpg/)

If you press F9 on your keyboard when you are at this screen then another small window will open giving you more detailed system information.
(http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/9845/990ud5027.jpg) (http://img26.imageshack.us/i/990ud5027.jpg/)

You can, if you want, go through BIOS and check everything out, I usually make a couple of minor changes at this stage such as Disabling the Full Screen Logo and setting the Init First Display to the correct port, in this instance that is PEG.

The following images are of the F3 BIOS for this motherboard
(http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/7215/990ud5028.jpg) (http://img717.imageshack.us/i/990ud5028.jpg/)

(http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/3880/990ud5029.jpg) (http://img89.imageshack.us/i/990ud5029.jpg/)

(http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/9170/990ud5030.jpg) (http://img135.imageshack.us/i/990ud5030.jpg/)

(http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/4130/990ud5031.jpg) (http://img197.imageshack.us/i/990ud5031.jpg/)

(http://img864.imageshack.us/img864/9952/990ud5032.jpg) (http://img864.imageshack.us/i/990ud5032.jpg/)

(http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/1125/990ud5033.jpg) (http://img151.imageshack.us/i/990ud5033.jpg/)

(http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/7777/990ud5034.jpg) (http://img121.imageshack.us/i/990ud5034.jpg/)

(http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/8176/990ud5035.jpg) (http://img684.imageshack.us/i/990ud5035.jpg/)

(http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/6127/990ud5036.jpg) (http://img171.imageshack.us/i/990ud5036.jpg/)

Once you have made any changes you wish to make press the F10 key, save the changes and the PC will reboot.
(http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/3239/990ud5038.jpg) (http://img96.imageshack.us/i/990ud5038.jpg/)

It will then stop and your screen should show you….
(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/1724/990ud5039.jpg) (http://img5.imageshack.us/i/990ud5039.jpg/)

This is normal and absolutely nothing to worry about. We haven’t installed the hard drive or operating system yet, but we now know that the PC works with the basic components. Any problems we may now face will be easier to track down.

to be continued....
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 12, 2011, 01:55:57 pm: Now we have tested the basic components and are happy that everything seems to be OK it is time to actually build the PC inside the case. I should mention at this stage that if you are using new RAM it is a good idea to test it during the previous build phase, just to make sure there are no faulty modules!

For this build I am using the following components:
Chassis: NZXT Tempest Evo
Mobo: GA-990FXA-UD5 (F3 BIOS)
CPU: AMD Phenom II x6 1090T BE 125W
Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 Air cooler
RAM: Corsair Dominator 2 x CMD4GX3M2B1600C8 (8 Gig) running at 1333MHz
GPU: Sapphire Radeon ATI 4850x2 (1 Gig)
Monitors: 1 x LG L1715S & 2 x LG L194WT
Sound Card: M-Audio Delta 1010
HDD's: 1TB, 2 X WD 640 Gig Caviar Black SATA3 6Gb/S, 1 x Hitachi Deskstar 1 x Seagate 1TB
DVD/CD: Samsung
Mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Optical USB
Keyboard: Microsoft Digital Media Pro
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit (Retail)

As I am using a 3rd Party cooler I need to change the CPU Cooler mounts. This is a relatively simple process of just unscrewing the existing mounts and replacing them with the new ones. Once you have swapped the mounting brackets you can pop your CPU back into the socket as it is safer there than on the workbench.
(http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/9796/990ud5040.jpg) (http://img192.imageshack.us/i/990ud5040.jpg/)

The Noctua NH-D14 is one of the larger Air Coolers and it is a good idea to place the cooler in position to check clearances, especially around the Mosfet Cooler and RAM slots.
(http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/954/990ud5041.jpg) (http://img823.imageshack.us/i/990ud5041.jpg/)
At this stage you do not need to fit the cooler or add Thermal Paste as we are just checking that you will be able to fit your other parts.

Insert the supplied Backplate into the PC case. These are usually made from thin metal and can be easily bent out of shape so you need to be a little bit careful. Make sure that you press firmly around the edges of the Backplate to ensure it sits home properly.
(http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/3382/990ud5042.jpg) (http://img834.imageshack.us/i/990ud5042.jpg/)

Make sure the motherboard stand-offs are positioned correctly for the motherboard and that there is nothing left lying where the motherboard will be placed.
(http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/7317/990ud5043.jpg) (http://img545.imageshack.us/i/990ud5043.jpg/)

Position the motherboard into the PC case so that it sits properly against the backplate and make sure the screw holes line up correctly with the motherboard stand-offs. It is a good idea to use a screw in each corner at the beginning to hold the motherboard in place. Don’t tighten them fully at this stage as you may need to tweak the position of the motherboard to line up all the holes properly.
(http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/8273/990ud5044.jpg) (http://img171.imageshack.us/i/990ud5044.jpg/)
When you’re happy that everything is in position tighten the screws and then add the remaining ones. Do not over tighten the screws as too much pressure could damage the motherboard.

Then add the Power Supply (PSU) making sure that you tighten the screws fully to hold it in place.
(http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/672/990ud5045.jpg) (http://img820.imageshack.us/i/990ud5045.jpg/)

Then connect the 24 pin ATX and 8 pin 12V power connectors.
(http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/7903/990ud5046.jpg) (http://img199.imageshack.us/i/990ud5046.jpg/)
This helps with the main cable routing and allows you to check that the power leads are long enough before you get too far into the build.

Add the Cables from the PC case to the motherboard headers.
(http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/3255/990ud5047.jpg) (http://img705.imageshack.us/i/990ud5047.jpg/)
Doing this at this stage is easier than trying to connect the cables when everything else is installed and space can become a little limited.

Insert your RAM modules following the User’s Manual to make sure you use the correct slots. In this build I am using 4 sticks of RAM so this is not an issue but if you are only using 1 or 2 RAM modules it is important they are installed correctly. Once you have installed the RAM you can then mount the CPU cooler.
(http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/6880/990ud5048.jpg) (http://img848.imageshack.us/i/990ud5048.jpg/)

Before adding your Graphic Card(s) or other PCIE devices it is a good idea to mount your HDD and DVD drive(s) and attach the necessary SATA cables.
(http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/2937/990ud5049.jpg) (http://img3.imageshack.us/i/990ud5049.jpg/)
This can prove very difficult if you try to do it after you have installed the Graphic Card(s) as the longer ones cover the SATA ports.

Now insert the graphic card and any other PCI(E) devices.
(http://img860.imageshack.us/img860/7527/990ud5050.jpg) (http://img860.imageshack.us/i/990ud5050.jpg/)

It is now time to connect the remaining power leads. At this stage of the build I would advise you to only attach the power leads to the graphic card(s) if they need them, your main hard-drive and the main DVD/CD drive.
(http://img864.imageshack.us/img864/8791/990ud5051.jpg) (http://img864.imageshack.us/i/990ud5051.jpg/)
If like me, you have more than one hard drive it is actually better to add them after you have installed the Operating System. Of course, if you are setting up a RAID array then you will obviously need to add the power leads to all the drives you are using.

And that’s it; the PC is now built and ready to be fired up again. Hopefully everything will work fine and there won’t be any problems. When you start the PC it is a good idea to go back into BIOS and make the adjustments that you want to .
(http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/6643/990ud5052.jpg) (http://img844.imageshack.us/i/990ud5052.jpg/)

(http://img802.imageshack.us/img802/8236/990ud5053.jpg) (http://img802.imageshack.us/i/990ud5053.jpg/)

(http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/8050/990ud5054.jpg) (http://img851.imageshack.us/i/990ud5054.jpg/)

(http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/1314/990ud5055.jpg) (http://img7.imageshack.us/i/990ud5055.jpg/)

(http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/6627/990ud5056.jpg) (http://img716.imageshack.us/i/990ud5056.jpg/)
Once you have gone through the process of saving the changes to BIOS and rebooting you can then proceed with installing your Operating System.

I’m not going to go through the steps of installing an OS here but I used a USB flashdrive to install Windows Ultimate 64 bit on this system. The process was quick and painless and in very short order I was able to login into Windows and check out Device Manager.
(http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/2023/990ud5057.jpg) (http://img833.imageshack.us/i/990ud5057.jpg/)
This showed me that I was missing a few drivers.

I decided to use the Gigabyte Install Disk and after loading it into the DVD drive the following window popped up.
(http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/9982/990ud5058.jpg) (http://img808.imageshack.us/i/990ud5058.jpg/)

Clicking on the Run Run.exe brought up the following screen.
(http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/4256/990ud5059.jpg) (http://img638.imageshack.us/i/990ud5059.jpg/)
This is part of Microsoft’s User Account Control and after clicking yes the following screen appeared.
(http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/445/990ud5060.jpg) (http://img62.imageshack.us/i/990ud5060.jpg/)
This allows you to install various items and as I only wanted to install the system drivers I unticked the other boxes and then clicked on the Install All button.
(http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/4582/990ud5061.jpg) (http://img101.imageshack.us/i/990ud5061.jpg/)
The drivers were installed without a problem.

A quick reboot later and going back into Device Manager showed me that the drivers had been installed. The missing Multimedia Audio Controller shown in this image is for my M-Audio Delta1010 Soundcard and not a problem.
(http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/8983/990ud5062.jpg) (http://img683.imageshack.us/i/990ud5062.jpg/)

A quick check with HW Monitor showed me that everything seemed to be fine.
(http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/8835/990ud5063.jpg) (http://img204.imageshack.us/i/990ud5063.jpg/)

At this stage I ran a quick test with CrystalDisk Mark. The Hard drive I am using is a Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6Gb/s 640GB drive and this test was run using the AMD AHCI Drivers.

I ran the test twice once using the 1000MB Read/Write test.
(http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/9325/990ud5064.jpg) (http://img543.imageshack.us/i/990ud5064.jpg/)

Then using the 500MB Read/Write test.
(http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/1346/990ud5065.jpg) (http://img808.imageshack.us/i/990ud5065.jpg/)

After running these tests I then re-installed the Operating System and drivers except this time I did not install the AMD AHCI drivers but retained the Microsoft ones installed by Windows and re-ran the CrystalDisk Mark tests.

1000MB Read/Write test using Microsoft AHCI drivers
(http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/8967/990ud5066.jpg) (http://img847.imageshack.us/i/990ud5066.jpg/)

500MB Read/Write test using Microsoft AHCI drivers
(http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/9595/990ud5067.jpg) (http://img821.imageshack.us/i/990ud5067.jpg/)

As you can see from these figures the Microsoft AHCI Drivers performed better than the AMD AHCI Drivers.

I then reinstalled the OS but this time I configured BIOS for Native IDE Mode. Once again I ran CrystalDisk Mark.

1000MB Read/Write test in Native IDE Mode
(http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/1656/cdmidemode001.png) (http://img195.imageshack.us/i/cdmidemode001.png/)

500MB Read/Write test in Native IDE Mode
(http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/8463/cdmidemode001b.png) (http://img580.imageshack.us/i/cdmidemode001b.png/)

As you can see with the SATA Controller set to Native IDE the Read/Write speeds are better than those in AHCI Mode when using the AMD AHCI Drivers. If you are looking to get the best out of a non- RAIDed HDD then AHCI Mode with Microsoft's standard AHCI driver is the way to go! ;)

Overall the GA-990FXA-UD5 is a nice motherboard and it worked straight out of the box. The design and layout is simple but effective and the whole system runs cooler than my previous GA-890FXA-UD5 (Rev. 2.1). The BIOS is similar to other Gigabyte AMD boards and therefore presented no problems to me for the initial set-up and configuration. AHCI Mode on the AMD SATA ports works well and the Marvell port, running in IDE mode is also performing well. It will be interesting to see how these controllers work in RAID mode and that is what I will be testing next

To be continued…..
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 12, 2011, 01:56:11 pm: Setting up a RAID0 Array on the AMD 950SB Controller

Setting up a RAID0 Array on the AMD SATA Controller

The first thing to do is make sure you have the correct hard-drives for your RAID array. These can be either mechanical or SSD but they should be of the same model and size to prevent any issues. I am using two Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6GB/s 640GB HDD’s for creating this array.

You need to make the appropriate changes to BIOS and this is done under the heading Integrated Peripherals
(http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/1299/amdraid001.jpg) (http://img689.imageshack.us/i/amdraid001.jpg/)

Set the OnChip SATA Controller to RAID from its default or current setting depending on whether or not you have made any previous changes to BIOS.
(http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/6381/amdraid002.jpg) (http://img98.imageshack.us/i/amdraid002.jpg/)
(http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/458/amdraid003.jpg) (http://img12.imageshack.us/i/amdraid003.jpg/)

You may also wish to change the OnChip SATA Port4/5 Type from As SATA Type
(http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/5150/amdraid004.jpg) (http://img822.imageshack.us/i/amdraid004.jpg/)

To IDE
(http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/7227/amdraid005.jpg) (http://img685.imageshack.us/i/amdraid005.jpg/)

This is particularly important if you wish to use a DVD/CD drive on one of these ports or if you are adding any extra drives that you do not wish to be part of the RAID array.

If you are not building a RAID5 Array you can safely disable the OnChip SATA RAID5 Support feature.
(http://img805.imageshack.us/img805/896/amdraid007.jpg) (http://img805.imageshack.us/i/amdraid007.jpg/)

Press F10, once you have made your BIOS changes and press the enter key to restart the system.
(http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/5286/amdraid008.jpg) (http://img836.imageshack.us/i/amdraid008.jpg/)

Once the system restarts you need to press the Ctrl+F keys to enter the RAID ROM Utility as this is where you actually setup the RAID Array.
(http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/9436/amdraid009.jpg) (http://img84.imageshack.us/i/amdraid009.jpg/)

Pressing Ctrl+F brings up this screen which gives you four options
(http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/1751/amdraid010.jpg) (http://img855.imageshack.us/i/amdraid010.jpg/)

1 shows you the drives and how they have been automatically assigned.
(http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/8469/amdraid011.jpg) (http://img233.imageshack.us/i/amdraid011.jpg/)

2 brings up the LD View Menu. LD stands for Logical Drive and it shows that the Raid Mode is 0 and that there are 2 drives in the Array. It also shows the Total capacity of the drives and that the array is functional.
(http://img810.imageshack.us/img810/6325/amdraid012.jpg) (http://img810.imageshack.us/i/amdraid012.jpg/)

I have to say that, at this stage, I was a little bit puzzled as the Array had been automatically setup which I really hadn’t expected.

Pressing Del+Ctrl+D allows you to delete the Array and you are asked to confirm the delete process by pressing Ctrl+Y. You don’t need to do this but I decided to do so as I wanted to see the steps for building an Array.
(http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/9213/amdraid013.jpg) (http://img831.imageshack.us/i/amdraid013.jpg/)

When you delete the array you are confronted by this screen.
(http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/4796/amdraid014.jpg) (http://img687.imageshack.us/i/amdraid014.jpg/)

Pressing Ctrl+ C brings up the screen that shows the attached drives. You need to use the up and down arrows to navigate the page and when you highlight one of the drives, pressing the space bar switches it from inactivate to active. Obviously you need to make sure the drives you intend to use are active then press Ctrl+Y to Save.
(http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/8659/amdraid015.jpg) (http://img535.imageshack.us/i/amdraid015.jpg/)

A popup will ask you to press Ctrl+Y again if you wish to give the Logical Drive a name. If you want the default name just hit any key at this stage. I hit the Ctrl+Y and then assigned the Logical Drive with a name I could easily recognise.
(http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/7205/amdraid017.jpg) (http://img8.imageshack.us/i/amdraid017.jpg/)

Pressing Ctrl+Y again brought up the following screen. I pressed Ctrl+Y again and the Array was created.
(http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/5268/amdraid018.jpg) (http://img35.imageshack.us/i/amdraid018.jpg/)

I was then given the choice of modifying the Arrays capacity or leaving it at maximum. I left it at maximum.
(http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/7461/amdraid019.jpg) (http://img856.imageshack.us/i/amdraid019.jpg/)

I was the informed that the system would Reboot and asked to confirm this was OK by pressing the Y key, which I did. If, at this stage, you are not sure of the settings you can press any other key and go back.
(http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/9748/amdraid020.jpg) (http://img148.imageshack.us/i/amdraid020.jpg/)

The system rebooted and the familiar Disk Boot Failure screen came up, which is not surprising as there is no OS installed yet.
(http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/3062/amdraid021.jpg) (http://img713.imageshack.us/i/amdraid021.jpg/)

I switched off the PC, plugged in my USB Pendrive that install the OS from and rebooted. Pressing F12 gave me the BOOT Menu dialogue where I highlighted the USB-HDD option, hit enter and proceeded to Install Windows 7.
(http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/5714/amdraid022.jpg) (http://img839.imageshack.us/i/amdraid022.jpg/)

Again, I have to admit to being a little concerned here. I had prepared the AMD RAID drivers on another USB Pendrive as I believed they would be needed but no, Windows recognised the Array and the install proceeded without the need for adding extra drivers.

Once Windows7 had installed a quick check showed that everything was indeed working as it should.
(http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/6413/amdraid023.jpg) (http://img89.imageshack.us/i/amdraid023.jpg/)

As you can see from this image AMD AHCI Compatible RAID Control drivers had been installed along with Windows 7.
(http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/6965/amdraid024.jpg) (http://img28.imageshack.us/i/amdraid024.jpg/)

I then installed the ATI motherboard drivers which added the AMD RAIDXpert function along with the AMD USB Filter Driver and the correct AMD AHCI Compatible SATA Raid Driver to replace the ones installed by Windows.
(http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/4264/amdraid025.jpg) (http://img20.imageshack.us/i/amdraid025.jpg/)

AMD RAIDXpert is a browser based utility and when you first run it you are faced with this screen.
(http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/5729/raidxpert000.png) (http://img69.imageshack.us/i/raidxpert000.png/)

To actually do anything you need to login and no indication of the Login ID or Password is immediately given. However, the default for both is “admin” and it does show this in brackets underneath the boxes…… Doh! A real Homer Simpson moment there if you don’t know what to do.
(http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/3564/raidxpert000a.png) (http://img684.imageshack.us/i/raidxpert000a.png/)

The home screen is pretty basic with the User Options on the left hand side of the screen.
(http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/981/raidxpert001.png) (http://img850.imageshack.us/i/raidxpert001.png/)

I’m not going into details of RAIDXpert but here are a couple of screenshots so you know what to expect.
(http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/4778/raidxpert002.png) (http://img854.imageshack.us/i/raidxpert002.png/)
(http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/535/raidxpert003.png) (http://img830.imageshack.us/i/raidxpert003.png/)

Once I had installed the drivers and was happy everything was running as it should I then ran CrystalDisk Mark to get an insight into the read/write capabilities of the RAID0 array.
As you can see they are about double of a single SATA HDD in either AHCI or Native IDE mode.

1000MB Read/Write test
(http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/7233/amdraidcdm001.png) (http://img708.imageshack.us/i/amdraidcdm001.png/)

500MB Read/Write test
(http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/8914/amdraidcdm002.png) (http://img818.imageshack.us/i/amdraidcdm002.png/)

If you like to use hardware monitoring programmes to keep an eye on temperatures you will encounter a problem as the HDD’s in the RAID Array do not show up in the usual monitoring programmes.
(http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/6783/amdraidhwm001.png) (http://img607.imageshack.us/i/amdraidhwm001.png/)

Overall the setting up of the RAID0 Array on the AMD controller was very easy and what really surprised me were the facts that:
a: The HDD’s I used were recognised and automatically configured correctly and needed no intervention on my part and…..
b: I didn’t need to install any specific RAID drivers, using F6, during the Windows7 installation.

However, I did encounter one small issue, which I believe to be down to the BIOS and I hope it is addressed with a future update and that is, the system would hang at the “Press <Ctrl-F> to enter RAID Option ROM Utility….” screen when rebooting. To overcome this I had to shutdown the PC completely and then restart to progress further.

The RAID Array functioned at the speeds I was expecting, using mechanical hard-drives and I really can’t fault it in this mode. It is very easy to set-up and once installed works as you would expect. AMD RAIDXpert allows you to control and check the array and seems to contain all of the functionality that you would need. Overall I was very impressed and, not being a regular RAID user I was pleasantly surprised at how much easier it is becoming to set-up and to use a simple RAID array.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 12, 2011, 01:56:23 pm: Using the Marvell 88SE9172 Controller in IDE and AHCI Modes

Having been running the board for several weeks with my hard drives attached to the AMD SATA Controller so I thought it was about time to investigate how the Marvell SATA Controller works on this motherboard. I have to say that I was reluctant to test it as my previous experience with the Marvell 9128 SATA Controller on the GA-790XTA-UD4 motherboard was less than positive.

I shouldn’t have been worried though as after reconfiguring my system and setting up the Marvell SATA Controller in AHCI mode I was able to install Windows7 without any problems. Reading through the User’s manual it says to install the Marvell AHCI/RAID controller during the install of Windows7 using F6 but I ignored this advice and let the operating system install using just the native Microsoft AHCI drivers.

For these tests I am using a single Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB SATA3 6G/Bs hard drive, which is the same drive I used when testing the AMD SATA Controller.

Once I had the system up and running I ran CrystalDisk mark with the Microsoft AHCI drivers, to get an idea of the read/write speeds of the controller.

As you can see from the following images the read write speeds are slightly slower than those of the AMD SATA Controller using the same driver.

1000MB Read/Write test using Microsoft AHCI drivers
(http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/8269/9172001.png) (http://img691.imageshack.us/i/9172001.png/)

500MB Read/Write test using Microsoft AHCI drivers
(http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/6911/9172002.png) (http://img84.imageshack.us/i/9172002.png/)

I then installed the Marvell AHCI Drivers and re-ran the same tests.

As you can see, the returned figures what somewhat different with the read speed during the 1000MB test being 13MB slower whilst the write speed was actually slightly higher.

1000MB Read/Write test using Marvell AHCI drivers
(http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/3918/9172003.png) (http://img148.imageshack.us/i/9172003.png/)

500MB Read/Write test using Marvell AHCI drivers
(http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/8584/9172004.png) (http://img15.imageshack.us/i/9172004.png/)

Because of the variation in figures I re-ran this test five times and the figures that were returned stayed around these numbers.

I then reconfigured the BIOS settings for the Marvell SATA Controller to Native IDE Mode, reinstalled the Operating System and then ran CrystalDisk Mark again. The figures that came back gave me a bit of a shock as I had been expecting lower numbers but, as you can see from the following images, the read/write speeds are actually better in IDE Mode than in AHCI Mode.

1000MB Read/Write test in IDE Mode
(http://img807.imageshack.us/img807/8420/9172006ide.png) (http://img807.imageshack.us/i/9172006ide.png/)

500MB Read/Write test in IDE Mode
(http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/1787/9172005ide.png) (http://img832.imageshack.us/i/9172005ide.png/)

This controller has me a little confused and I’m not exactly sure of the best way to configure it, performance wise, if you are just running one or two stand alone hard drives. Overall, the Native IDE mode returns the best read/write figures but if you are running an SSD (which I do not have for testing purposes) you will be looking to run in AHCI Mode and this may give a slight performance hit.

As things stand, personally I will be leaving my DVD/CD Writer attached to this controller in IDE Mode and returning my HDD’s to their usually position on the AMD SATA controller as I believe that this offers the best performance options when running non-raided HDD’s.

But how does this controller perform when in RAID mode? That is something I am going to be exploring over the next couple of days…..

…… to be continued
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 12, 2011, 01:56:36 pm: Setting up a RAID0 Array on the Marvell 88SE9172 SATA Controller.

With two Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB SATA3 6G/Bs hard drives in hand, I decided it was time to see how this controller operates in a RAID0 Array. The only previous experience I have had with running a RAID Array on a Marvell Controller (the 9127 chipset on the GA-790XTA-UD4) was, shall I say, less than perfect. In fact, with exactly the same hard drives, I couldn’t get that controller to work in anything other than Native IDE Mode!

Ever the optimist and with my favourite saying: “Never give up; Never surrender!” running through my head, I attached the drives to the Grey Marvell SATA ports and I then started the PC and entered BIOS to make the necessary changes. I should point out at this stage the all of the following BIOS screenshots are from the F5b BETA BIOS that I am running and that the options may be different if you are running a different BIOS version.

Upon entering BIOS the first thing to do is to navigate to the Integrated Peripheral page.

(http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/4299/marvellbios001.jpg) (http://img143.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios001.jpg/)

The OnChip SATA Controller at the top is for the AMD SATA Controller and as I had attached my DVD/CD Drive to one of these ports I set the controller to Native IDE.

(http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/6875/marvellbios002.jpg) (http://img695.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios002.jpg/)

The GSATA3 Controller is the one for the Marvell 98SE1972 Chipset that controls the On-board SATA connectors so I double checked that I had enabled this. The next thing to change is the GSATA3 Ctrl Mode from IDE to RAID.

(http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/8093/marvellbios003.jpg) (http://img97.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios003.jpg/)

(http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/9527/marvellbios004.jpg) (http://img705.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios004.jpg/)

(http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/4945/marvellbios005.jpg) (http://img577.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios005.jpg/)

Hit the F10 key to save to BIOS and then reboot.

(http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/5581/marvellbios006.jpg) (http://img808.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios006.jpg/)

When the PC rebooted it went through the usual POST Checks and the Marvell Controller for the RAID appeared.

(http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/4351/marvellbios007.jpg) (http://img121.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios007.jpg/)
At this stage you need to press the Ctrl+M keys so that you can assign the hard drives to the RAID Array.

Entering the Marvell BIOS Setup utility you are faced with this screen.

(http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/1083/marvellbios008.jpg) (http://img217.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios008.jpg/)

Navigation is made by using the “arrow” keys on the keyboard to highlight an item and the Enter (return) Key or the Space Bar to select it.

A quick run through the different headings brought up the following screens.

Adaptor

(http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/8888/marvellbios009.jpg) (http://img204.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios009.jpg/)

Devices

(http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/9890/marvellbios010.jpg) (http://img594.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios010.jpg/)
This screen shows the hard drives and also your virtual disk if you have created one. In this instance it is saying No Virtual Disk! This was not a surprise as I hadn’t created one yet.

Entering the RAID heading gave me this screen.

(http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/653/marvellbios011.jpg) (http://img191.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios011.jpg/)

As I wanted to create a Virtual Disk I highlighted that option (Create VD – VD stands for Virtual Disk) and pressed the enter key, which gave me the following screen.

(http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/3140/marvellbios012.jpg) (http://img221.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios012.jpg/)

This was very similar to the Devices screen but here you actually select the drives for the RAID Array. To do that you highlight the drive and then press the enter key or space bar.

When you do this a small asterisk appears at the start of the line.

(http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/6403/marvellbios013.jpg) (http://img84.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios013.jpg/)

You need to do this for both drives.

(http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/6650/marvellbios014.jpg) (http://img850.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios014.jpg/)

Then highlight the Next and press enter which brings up this screen.
(http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/7850/marvellbios015.jpg) (http://img830.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios015.jpg/)

Here is where you choose your RAID Type and the choices are RAID0 or RAID1. I selected RAID0 and left all of the other parameters at their default settings…..

(http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/4104/marvellbios016.jpg) (http://img600.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios016.jpg/)

except for the VD Name which will help identify the Array if you have more than one array.

Once again you need to highlight the next line and press enter.

(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/7655/marvellbios017.jpg) (http://img5.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios017.jpg/)

A red line appears at the bottom of the screen saying “Create the VD?[Y]

I hit the Y key and after a couple of seconds the following screen appeared that showed me that the RAID Array had been created and that it was online.

(http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/7584/marvellbios018.jpg) (http://img8.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios018.jpg/)

Once I was happy that everything was fine I pressed the “Esc” Key and I was asked if I wanted to Exit Setup.

(http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/2323/marvellbios019.jpg) (http://img64.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios019.jpg/)

I pressed the Y key and the system rebooted and everything was working as I thought it should.

I then proceeded to install Windows 7 and after going through the initial stages I was asked for the device driver.

(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2658/marvellbios020.jpg) (http://img5.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios020.jpg/)

I used the drivers that came on the installation DVD supplied with the motherboard. For this, you need to insert the disk into the DVD drive and then browse to the necessary folder which is named Marvell

(http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/3300/marvellbios021.jpg) (http://img853.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios021.jpg/)

You then need to highlight the folder named AMD64 and click on the OK button.

(http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/4213/marvellbios022.jpg) (http://img695.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios022.jpg/)

Windows will show you the selected driver and then you can click the “next” button to proceed with the installation of Windows.

(http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/2808/marvellbios023.jpg) (http://img9.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios023.jpg/)

The RAID Array is now visible and installing the OS is the same as for installing in IDE or AHCI mode.

(http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/2696/marvellbios024.jpg) (http://img818.imageshack.us/i/marvellbios024.jpg/)

Once into Windows I noticed that the RAID Array had become a removable device, but I wouldn’t advise you to try clicking the eject option!

(http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/181/marvellraid001.png) (http://img508.imageshack.us/i/marvellraid001.png/)

Breaking with my normal tradition of never using the Installation DVD to load drivers I launched the installation software.

(http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/5661/marvellraid002.png) (http://img84.imageshack.us/i/marvellraid002.png/)

(http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/6930/marvellraid003.png) (http://img543.imageshack.us/i/marvellraid003.png/)

I checked through the items that it wanted to load and then proceeded to install the drivers as single items.

The first Driver I installed was Marvell RAID Driver. Once I clicked on the Install button the driver setup window opened

(http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/392/marvellraid004.png) (http://img196.imageshack.us/i/marvellraid004.png/)

I went through the various screens

(http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/1399/marvellraid005.png) (http://img849.imageshack.us/i/marvellraid005.png/)

But left everything at the default settings

(http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/9920/marvellraid006.png) (http://img717.imageshack.us/i/marvellraid006.png/)

Once the installation had been completed I was asked to reboot the machine.

(http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/5368/marvellraid007.png) (http://img845.imageshack.us/i/marvellraid007.png/)

I did this but was surprised when, after the PC had restarted, I was informed that it had loaded the required drivers and would need to reboot again. I did another reboot and everything seemed fine.

I then loaded the other drivers I required and checked under Device Manager

(http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/5476/marvellraid008.png) (http://img718.imageshack.us/i/marvellraid008.png/)

Everything was fine though I should point out at this stage, that I was never asked to install drivers for any of the AMD features on the motherboard and the Installation Disk did not have any specific AMD drivers showing either.

I then ran CrystalDiskMark to see what read/write speeds the RAID Array was returning.

1000MB Read/Write test
(http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/7237/marvellraid009.png) (http://img17.imageshack.us/i/marvellraid009.png/)

500MB Read/Write test
(http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/3994/marvellraid010.png) (http://img707.imageshack.us/i/marvellraid010.png/)

The read/write speeds from these tests actually show an improvement over those on the AMD SATA Controller when it is used in RAID0 (check here: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,5704.msg45816.html#msg45816 )

When I started this part of the review, I have to say that I did so with more than a little apprehension. The same make of hard drives on the Marvell 9127 chipset had been unable to function and, at that time (approx 12 months ago) even Western Digital claimed that I was trying to use the wrong type of drive for a Raid configuration.

The Marvell 98SE9172 chipset is a totally different beast to its predecessor though and I have to say I am impressed with the relative ease of setting up the RAID0 Array and in how it has been working. The read/write speeds are better than those of the AMD SATA controller and is just as stable.

It does however, have some limitations. You can only use RAID0 or RAID1 which may cause some issues if you have a disk failure. It is also a little harder to setup than the AMD SATA RAID controller which automatically recognises and assigns your hard drives for you. But overall I have to admit to being won over and as an option to improve throughput of information on the PC I can’t really fault it.

Of course, I have only been able to test with mechanical hard drives and the real proof of the pudding would be how well the controller works with SSD’s but, as it stands, it seems to do what it says on the box and you really can’t ask for anything more.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 12, 2011, 01:56:48 pm: Using SSD's

OK, I have finally decided to come out of the dark ages and invest in a couple of SSD's for my PC. I got hold of two ADATA 60GB S511 SATA 6Gb/s drives which claim to have read/write speeds of up to 550MB/s for read and 500 MB/s for write.

Now, before I go any further I have to admit that my knowledge of SSD's and how well they perform has been limited to what I have read and to the one system (my son's) that I built and never got to play with as he ran off with it as soon as I had put it together for him, although he is very pleased with it.

Before embarking on testing I did a lot of research and with a little bit of a headache from all the reading I had done, set about reconfiguring my system.

The first test I did was using a single SSD in AHCI Mode on the AMD 950 SATA Controller. I installed the OS (Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64 bit) and the motherboard drivers but I left the actually AHCI drivers as the Windows default Microsoft version.

For testing the read/write speeds I used CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 software.

1000MB read/write test AMD Controller Microsoft AHCI driver
(http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/9579/ahciamdmsdriver001.png) (http://img27.imageshack.us/i/ahciamdmsdriver001.png/)

500MB read/write test AMD Controller Microsoft AHCI driver
(http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/1127/ahciamdmsdriver002.png) (http://img195.imageshack.us/i/ahciamdmsdriver002.png/)

As you can see from the above images I got a really good read speed of about 450MB/s but I was surprised by how low the read figures were.

I then installed the AMD AHCI Drivers and re ran the same tests.

1000MB read/write test AMD Controller AMD AHCI driver
(http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/8342/ahciamddriver001.png) (http://img59.imageshack.us/i/ahciamddriver001.png/)

500MB read/write test AMD Controller AMD AHCI driver
(http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/8135/ahciamddriver002.png) (http://img844.imageshack.us/i/ahciamddriver002.png/)

This time the read speed had gone up to approximately 465MB/s but the write speeds had dropped a little.

I then ran Bootracer just to see how quickly the system booted and got back a pretty impressive 11 seconds.
(http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/9633/ahciamddriver003.png) (http://img402.imageshack.us/i/ahciamddriver003.png/)

The figures for Bootracer were the same with either driver.

Having tested the AMD ports in AHCI Mode I then reconfigured the PC for the Marvell Controller, reinstalled the OS and drivers and went through the same tests again.

1000MB read/write test Marvell 9172 Controller with Microsoft AHCI driver.
(http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/7474/ahcimarvellmsdriver001.png) (http://img832.imageshack.us/i/ahcimarvellmsdriver001.png/)

500MB read/write test Marvell 9172 Controller with Microsoft AHCI driver.
(http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/1884/ahcimarvellmsdriver002.png) (http://img29.imageshack.us/i/ahcimarvellmsdriver002.png/)

The figures that came back showed a drop of about 100MB/s for the read test but the write figures stayed around the same as for the AMD Controller.

I then installed the Marvell AHCI Driver and re-ran the same tests.

1000MB read/write test Marvell 9172 Controller with Marvell AHCI driver.
(http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/8893/ahcimarvelldriver001.png) (http://img215.imageshack.us/i/ahcimarvelldriver001.png/)

500MB read/write test Marvell 9172 Controller with Marvell AHCI driver.
(http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/6092/ahcimarvelldriver002.png) (http://img577.imageshack.us/i/ahcimarvelldriver002.png/)

As you can see, there was a dramatic drop on the read performance, almost 200MB/s, at one point, over the AMD Controller. The write speeds though, stayed pretty much the same.

A quick run of Bootracer showed that the system took 2 seconds longer to BOOT.
(http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/1473/ahcimarvelldriver003.png) (http://img809.imageshack.us/i/ahcimarvelldriver003.png/)

Having now discovered how a single SSD was running on both SATA controllers I next tested how the two drives worked in a RAID0 Array. Once again, after reconfiguring the PC and BIOS for RAID on the AMD Controller I reinstalled the OS and drivers and set about testing things again.

1000MB read/write test RAID0 AMD Controller with Microsoft AHCI driver.
(http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/3681/raid0amdmsdriver001.png) (http://img217.imageshack.us/i/raid0amdmsdriver001.png/)

500MB read/write test RAID0 AMD Controller with Microsoft AHCI driver.
(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6892/raid0amdmsdriver002.png) (http://img5.imageshack.us/i/raid0amdmsdriver002.png/)

The read speed increased to about 720MB/s and the write speeds went up to around 160MB/s. This was pretty much what I was expecting given the figures for a single drive.

I then installed the AMD AHCI Drivers and tested things again.

1000MB read/write test RAID0 AMD Controller with AMD AHCI driver.
(http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/3528/raid0amddriver001.png) (http://img836.imageshack.us/i/raid0amddriver001.png/)

500MB read/write test RAID0 AMD Controller with AMD AHCI driver.
(http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/3830/raid0amddriver002.png) (http://img691.imageshack.us/i/raid0amddriver002.png/)

I was a little surprised by these figures as the improvement was much less in a RAID0 array over those of the single drive with the AMD Driver

Bootracer also showed that it actually took a little longer to get things started.

AMD Driver:
(http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/8172/raid0amddriver003.png) (http://img834.imageshack.us/i/raid0amddriver003.png/)

Microsoft Driver:
(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/7457/raid0amdmsdriver003.png) (http://img51.imageshack.us/i/raid0amdmsdriver003.png/)

With a one second difference between the two drivers.

After burying my head inside the PC case once more I was ready to test the Marvell Controller in RAID0. A clean install of the OS to keep things even and I was ready to see what figures this controller delivered.

1000MB read/write test RAID0 Marvell SATA Controller with Microsoft AHCI driver.
(http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/2730/raid0marvellmsdriver001.png) (http://img841.imageshack.us/i/raid0marvellmsdriver001.png/)

500MB read/write test RAID0 Marvell SATA Controller with Microsoft AHCI driver.
(http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/9629/raid0marvellmsdriver002.png) (http://img842.imageshack.us/i/raid0marvellmsdriver002.png/)

To say I was shocked with these figures would be an understatement, I practically fell off of my chair. In fact, I was so surprised that I actually went back, erased the SSD's and went through the whole process of installing everything again and re-running the tests..... No mistake, these are the figures the Marvell controller returned in a RAID0 configuration.

OK, I thought, maybe things will be better with the Marvell drivers installed. But, I was bitterly disappointed, the figures were even worse!

1000MB read/write test RAID0 Marvell SATA Controller with Marvell AHCI driver.
(http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/8872/raid0marvelldriver001.png) (http://img842.imageshack.us/i/raid0marvelldriver001.png/)

500MB read/write test RAID0 Marvell SATA Controller with Marvell AHCI driver.
(http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/5273/raid0marvelldriver002.png) (http://img560.imageshack.us/i/raid0marvelldriver002.png/)

Running Bootracer showed that despite the lower figures the system actually booted quicker than it did when using the AMD controller.
Microsoft Driver:
(http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/7657/raid0marvellmsdriver003.png) (http://img638.imageshack.us/i/raid0marvellmsdriver003.png/)

Marvell Driver:
(http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/5978/raid0marvelldriver003.png) (http://img844.imageshack.us/i/raid0marvelldriver003.png/)

And, despite the low read/write figures when using the Marvell Drivers it actually booted the quickest with this setup in RAID0.

I should also point out that I did try a clean install of the OS a third time and double checked that I had installed the correct Marvell drivers using F6 during the OS install. However, the test results were still the same.

Conclusion
As I said at the very beginning of these tests, I am a newbie when it comes to using SSD's and I could have made an error somewhere along the way although I don't believe I have done so. Also, I am not working in some test facility but in the real world, as a home user, so I would expect my results to be pretty much what the average user will be getting. Also bear in mind that the choice of SSD, their read/write capabilities and the actual capacity of the drive will have a bearing on the results achieved, with larger capacity drives often returning better figures.

With that said, with Solid State Drives now coming down in price, to a level that is making them a viable option the question of the performance gain by investing in one or two is becoming one that is being asked regularly. As you can see from the testing I have done the speeds are much improved over a traditional mechanical hard drive but the with some reservations.

As I previously stated the read/write capabilities of SSD's vary, depending on the size of the drives, the chips used in them and of course, the PC platform. With the GA-990FXA-UD5 I had hoped for a better return from my investment, especially when it comes to the write figures being so low compared to their possible speed. This is down primarily to the drivers and it seems strange that, after all of this time, AMD and Marvell still lag behind the 2006 Microsoft AHCI Drivers.

I have reconfigured my PC and am now running the OS on a RAID0 array using the AMD SATA Controller and the Microsoft AHCI drivers as this gives the best overall read/write figures.

The Marvell GSATA ports leave a lot to be desired and in my opinion are best left alone, or used as I am doing, in Native IDE Mode for my DVD Burner. I had high hopes for this feature, especially after the debacle of the Marvell 9128 chips on earlier boards but it seems to me as if nothing has improved and average read figures of 200MB/s and write of 154MB/s in a RAID0 array leave a bad taste in the mouth which will not easily be got rid of. Come on Marvell, get your act together and write some decent drivers for this chipset!

If you can afford a large enough single SSD then, using the AMD SATA controller, along with the Microsoft AHCI Driver is probably going to give you the best overall system boost. If, like me, you get hold of a couple of smaller capacity SSD's then a RAID0 Array on the AMD Controller and again using the Microsoft AHCI Drivers will probably give you the best returns.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 12, 2011, 02:19:56 pm: reserved for future updates
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 12, 2011, 02:20:07 pm: reserved for future updates
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Night Gyr on June 12, 2011, 02:44:23 pm: Just in time Sir!

You've missed the IPMI connector. Now *this* is rare and it's a really really nice move by GB. Notice how Intel boards lack this kind of interface. :P at Intel

Aaand, I've already started a thread on that problem, but the lack of Power et al. buttons and Dual LAN and Coax Audio makes this board suck compared to the original 890FX (and FXA, for that matter.) I pray for Gigabyte not to take the "pay for the new features with the old ones" strategy. *Sigh*
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 12, 2011, 03:09:07 pm: Hi there,

not sure what you are referring to when you say the IPMI Connector. Are you talking about the TPM (Trusted Platform Module) header on the motherboard?
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Dark Mantis on June 12, 2011, 03:44:46 pm: Hey nice review so far absic. I will look forward to the coming installments.

What is so big about the TPM anyway ? It isn't exactly new and has been an option on many motherboards before. I am just surprised it never really took off in a big way before.

Looks a nice board though and especially in black. Should make a lot of people happy along with the SLI support.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Night Gyr on June 12, 2011, 03:49:43 pm: Ah so it's TPM not IPMI!

Well you see there's no "Detailed schematics" on the mobo page yet. So I only have the photos, and if you look closely, the top of the "TPM" label is cut off by the header itself, so I had thought it was "IPM" and not "TPM" there. Well yeah that makes more sense. (If only I knew what exactly TPM is, but I'll sure google for it later when I have the mood for it :))

BTW absic have you already run this board? If yes, how cool is it under load - the VRM, the NB heatsink, the board itself?
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 12, 2011, 04:07:14 pm: Yes, I am actually testing this board and writing the review now and will be adding such details as Temperatures, Voltages, Overclocking capabilities etc as the review progresses.

But so far it does seem to be much cooler than the GA-890FXA-UD5 (Rev 2.1) motherboard I was running before. But that could just be because it is much cooler where I am than it was a few days ago!
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: geekyadz on June 12, 2011, 04:19:31 pm: Quote from: absic on June 12, 2011, 04:07:14 pm
Yes, I am actually testing this board and writing the review now and will be adding such details as Temperatures, Voltages, Overclocking capabilities etc as the review progresses.

But so far it does seem to be much cooler than the GA-890FXA-UD5 (Rev 2.1) motherboard I was running before. But that could just be because it is much cooler where I am than it was a few days ago!
Looking forward to it :)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 13, 2011, 11:37:19 am: Thanks cchaos,

I know you are interested in this particular board and it is working well. So far I have only been testing the system in AHCI Mode using the AMD SB950 SATA controller but I have already noticed that when transferring large files from HDD to another the transfer speed is higher than on the GA-890FXA-UD5. Yesterday I transferred one file of 10 Gig from one SATA 6GB/s HDD to another 6GB/s drive and it shot across at about 100MB sec on average. The same file transferred to a SATA 3 GB/s HDD copied at around 65MB/s

As the title of this thread states, this is a living review and as such I am actually testing and using the board at the same time, much as any user would do. I am planning to test the RAID features within the next few days and then, once I am happy that everything is stable and working fine, I will do some overclocking.

Don't forget, if anyone has any questions or want me to look at something specific just ask and I will do my best to help.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Night Gyr on June 13, 2011, 03:51:37 pm: absic,

Could you please also measure the northbridge and the VRM temps at start/at idle after some time/under load? The last one is probably not possible as you're not benchmarking yet, but the first two readings are really interesting to me. (And if you do so, please specify the geographical location/ambient temperatures you're having there.)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 13, 2011, 03:57:34 pm: Hi Night Gyr,

at the moment I am still trying to find some software that will report things accurately. I am not sure which software I can trust as nothing seems to be correct, although I may be mistaken. All of the apps I have tried so far are reporting the AMD SB950 chipset as the AMD850 chip. However I will post back with some screen shots of the information I have so you can see what's going on.

EDIT:
Here are some screen shots of different monitoring programmes and how they are reporting things at the moment.(http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/3866/easytune001.png) (http://img811.imageshack.us/i/easytune001.png/)
(http://img863.imageshack.us/img863/8300/easytune001b.png) (http://img863.imageshack.us/i/easytune001b.png/)
(http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/1963/hwmon001.png) (http://img155.imageshack.us/i/hwmon001.png/)
(http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/928/hwmon001b.png) (http://img189.imageshack.us/i/hwmon001b.png/)
(http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/2678/amdoverdrive001.png) (http://img339.imageshack.us/i/amdoverdrive001.png/)

As you can see the CPU temps differ widely from 17C - 30C. I have to say that I believe EasyTune6 is showing the closest figures as the ambient temp here is 22C but it is very limited in what it actually shows and as such, is not really very helpful. :-\
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Night Gyr on June 13, 2011, 04:18:14 pm: External temp meters? Like those multimeter-like, that allow you to touch the surface and get the temp.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 13, 2011, 04:31:23 pm: I have thought of that but not very practical as most of the essential parts are buried beneath the heatsinks. However, the whole system does seem cooler than the GA-890FXA-UD5 (rev 2.1) board that I was using and, where I can finger test heatsinks etc nothing is making me jump. The Southbridge is so cool to the touch that it makes me wonder if it is actually working and, if TMPIN0 is referring to the Southbridge then 32C would seem about right to me.

My 1090T CPU has always run around the 25C mark, since I fitted the Noctua Cooler and this may be the figure showing as TMPIN1. However CoreTemp is showing the individual cores to be at between 15C- 18C the same figures that HWMonitor is reporting them at. But, as you can see, AMD Overdrive is reporting the cores at 30C so something is wrong there. However AMD Overdrive is also reporting the Southbridge as the AMD 800 Chip rather than as the AMD 950 that it should!
(http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/9294/amdoverdrive001c.png) (http://img52.imageshack.us/i/amdoverdrive001c.png/)

That would leave TMPIN2 as the Northbridge and again, where I can touch the Heatsink this is again feeling very cool. The figures reported for motherboard temps maybe accurate but I can't state categorically that they are.

EDIT:
Here is a screen shot of how BIOS is reporting things.
(http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/6628/bios001a.jpg) (http://img713.imageshack.us/i/bios001a.jpg/)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Night Gyr on June 13, 2011, 04:54:35 pm: Well that's nice to hear. See I have an EVGA SLI3 (X58) here and... well, I haven't cared enough about airflow yet, but the idea is, that the NB is *very* hot. Maybe that's because I'm using a top-down cooler that exhausts hot CPU air onto the NB. (Sorry if I'm hijacking your thread :), but I'm telling you this to justify asking - do you use a top/down cooler for the test benches? Or could you possibly use one and post the results?)

Re the 850/950 question:
They say they use the same silicon, but different firmware or microcode/BIOS/how's it called. So this is no surprise for me :)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Night Gyr on June 13, 2011, 04:57:21 pm: Also, regarding the heatsinks:

May you (that is, if you own the board or are allowed to disassemble it or take other potentially destructive actions) unscrew the heatsinks, take a look there and possibly take a photo and post it here? I know EVGA has it perfect, ASUS could not care less about it, now Gigabyte seems to be trying to get into the hi-fi market, and I wonder how they got it this time.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 13, 2011, 05:01:09 pm: Sorry I don't have a top down cooler to test with but, I would have thought that if anything, they would improve the airflow around the Northbridge.

Here is an image taken from the review I did for the GA-890FXA-UD5 which shows the temps reported for that:
(http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/6880/hwmonitor001ga890fxaud5.jpg) (http://img18.imageshack.us/i/hwmonitor001ga890fxaud5.jpg/)

As you can see the GA-990FXA-UD5 does seem to be cooler overall.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Night Gyr on June 13, 2011, 06:15:15 pm: Thanks!

I had been referring ti the TIM application there in the previous post, sorry for being unclear. Too much gaming with pros online, my brain is full of frags not words now :D
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 13, 2011, 06:42:05 pm: No problem I actually understood what you were looking for! :D
No wonder my wife says that I am a geek when she introduces me to her friends. :-[
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: geekyadz on June 13, 2011, 06:51:55 pm: What power supply would you recommend for the board? Im just wondering if my old one will be up for the job or if you think its worth getting a new one
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 13, 2011, 06:56:50 pm: I'm running a Corsair 620 Watt Modular PSU. Depending on what you are going to install I would suggest a good 550 Watt PSU or above. Bear in mind that the older your PSU the more chance it will be giving less power than stated, as they do deteriorate over time.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Night Gyr on June 13, 2011, 08:19:38 pm: Same PSU here!

I always say to the people looking for the best PSU available: it's da Seasonic Semi-Passively Cooled Fully Modular PSU's. You can't get any better than that IMO. Well, same as EVGA boards :P

Now there's one thing I don't like about this new Gigabyte 900 Series lineup:
There's no 990X (8x + 8x) board using the new tech (MOSFETS, black PCB, rich I/O) as opposed to ASUS. Look at the M5A99 EVO - has it all and even more than that. (:P at GB fans). Would be nice to see a 990X-UD4 or UD3 like that.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 14, 2011, 12:15:13 pm: OK I have just run my first stress test using Heavyload to see what temps are created when the CPU & RAM are maxed out. I have to say that I am mightily impressed! The BIOS settings are still pretty much at the default settings and I have made no changes to any of the settings under the M.I.T. section. This will be looked at in greater detail when I get around to trying out the overclocking capabilities of this board.

(http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/958/heavyload001.png) (http://img8.imageshack.us/i/heavyload001.png/)

As you can see from this after running Heavyload for an hour the Motherboard temp never went above 33°C the CPU didn't go above 39°C and the TMPIN2 (which I believe to be the Northbridge) didn't climb above 46°C. The ambient temp is 24°C.

Bear in mind, when looking at these figures that I am using a 3rd Party Noctua cooler and that my case does have 6 fans and very good airflow.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Night Gyr on June 14, 2011, 12:31:54 pm: Nice!

Do they fans make noise BTW? Any noticeable noise? Because temps is nice, but as for me, 'm aiming at a building a completely silent computer.

Anyway much better that the X58 boards. Now the only thing left to figure out is the thermal paster application AND if there;s any thermal paster at all or is this pure crappy TIM pads.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 14, 2011, 12:56:25 pm: Sadly the case fans do make a little noise but, in fact, the Sapphire 4850X2 GPU that I use is the noisiest component. The Noctua Cooler is, for all intent and purposes, silent!

Using a different PC case and GPU would obviously bring the noise levels down a bit and from what I am experiencing so far with this board, wouldn't impact too much on the temps, as it really does run very cool.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Night Gyr on June 14, 2011, 03:05:22 pm: Well this is awesome news. The 4850 X2 - I hear you man, better say, I can hear the thing even from my desk ;)

BTW absic, if you're about to upgrade, and are a PC hardware tester, I'd recommend you to have a look at the new Corsair cases - like 650d/500d. Nice middle-tier cases they are. I'll go further than that and ask you to review those (on a different forum maybe) as well. :) (Hope this is not too much :))

And Scythe fans are some really cheap and quiet fans. If you have the cash, there's Enermax, but those may need an additional fan controller as they're not silent by default.

(Pardon my OT, but it's the geek in me who's talking here not me :D)\

Aaand one more thing, I'd like to ask you how does the board boot? E.g. are there any additional controllers initializations with reboots following (like in ASUS P6T SE) or any other stuff that would require waiting/pressing any keys/just plain old annoy you? This BTW is one of the reasons I don't want to get an ASUS board. The other one is UEFI.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Dark Mantis on June 15, 2011, 08:52:55 am: If you don't like noise try liquid cooling instead of the air. My system is silent to all intents and purposes and is stting right next to me on the desk.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 15, 2011, 10:05:03 am: Quote from: Night Gyr on June 14, 2011, 03:05:22 pm
Aaand one more thing, I'd like to ask you how does the board boot? E.g. are there any additional controllers initializations with reboots following (like in ASUS P6T SE) or any other stuff that would require waiting/pressing any keys/just plain old annoy you? This BTW is one of the reasons I don't want to get an ASUS board. The other one is UEFI.

At the moment I am experiencing a few issues with BOOTING this board and am passing the information I am gathering, on to Gigabyte, in an effort to find the cause and is one of the reasons I like to do a living review rather than a standard hardware review, as it can throw up more of the problems user's will come across in the real world.

A general hardware review will look at the features, set the board up once, run a few tests and try a little overclocking and say everything is fine, sometimes with a few criticisms, but won't give a real insight into how the board works on a day-to-day basis.

Generally though, the BOOT process is one of switching on the power, pressing the On switch on the PC case and waiting for the POST and BOOT to run their course. No intervention is required from the user. The only time you should really need to enter the BIOS is during the initial setting up and then, if you wish, to overclock your PC. Gigabyte boards do seem to take a little longer to go through the POST & BOOT phases than some other manufacturer's boards and if you are not used to this it can seem a little disconcerting.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 22, 2011, 11:52:07 am: I've just updated the thread here: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,5704.msg45816.html#msg45816
with information regarding setting up a RAID0 Array on the AMD SB950 Controller.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Lordred on June 23, 2011, 08:17:20 am: Hello Absic, I was wondering if you had attempted any overclocking runs with the UD5 as of yet, as I have been getting some large ammounts of Vdrop on the Vcore and Dram thats rather unsettling as I bought the 990FXA-UD5 based on its voltage regulation.

With my 1100T brought up to 4000mhz I am getting 11/100ths of V drop (-0.11) from the bios setting under load, and a drop of 3/100ths (-0.03) from bios while idle. While the Dram is consistantly showing a Vdrop of 3/100ths. Would you be so kind as to see if you are having the same issues or not?

The exact settings I'm using are as follows

FSB:250
CPU Multi 16
HT Link X10 (2500)
NB X11 (2750)
Dram : 6.66 (3:10) 1666mhz 8-8-8-24-34-1t 1.68v (1.65v after drop)
CPUV 1.475v (1.472idle, 1.392load)
CPUNB 1.375v (not read)

C1E: Disabled
C&Q: Disabled

(http://pumpgasracing.homestead.com/files/Comp/Defiant/990FXAUD5/4ghzload.jpg)
(http://pumpgasracing.homestead.com/files/Comp/Defiant/990FXAUD5/4ghzidle.jpg)

Thanks
~Red
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 23, 2011, 08:25:25 am: Hi there,

to be honest I haven't undertaken any real attempts at O/C'ing yet as I have encountered a few other issues with the BIOS that I am struggling to get to grips with.

If you can give me a couple of days I will look into what happens but remember, I am running a 1090T so it will probably not work in the same way on my system as your CPU does on yours. Also, what make and model of RAM are you running and how much, as this would have a bearing on any results too?
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Lordred on June 23, 2011, 08:33:08 am: Sure I can wait a little for that.

As for ram I have Kingston HyperX T1 DDR3 2000mhz 2x2gb kit # KHX2000C9AD3T1K2/4GX rated for 9-11-9-27-47-2T 1.65v However since no present AMD application allows for a tRC (bank cycle time) in excess of 42 I have opted to run tighter timings at lower a lower speed.

As for the ram having an effect on the actual performance that there is no doubt about. But the Vdrop is what really gets me, as the board I was using prior to this was an Asus M4N98TD EVO which only has an 8+1 split phase power delivery. But did not suffer as much drop as I am getting with the UD5, because the Asus suffered less from voltage drop I was able to maintain lower Vcores at the same, and higher clock speeds.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 23, 2011, 08:41:12 am: Yes, I understand where you're coming from and it is always nice to get a good overclock at the lowest possible voltages.

I will look into what happens on my system and will give an update as soon as I have some proper info for you. And, just so you know, I will be covering overclocking in this review too.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Lordred on June 23, 2011, 08:44:16 am: I look forward to your review. As so far it would seem you are the only one putting together a review for the UD5.

As for the rest of our differences between our systems. I am running a pair of GTX480's and a Thermaltake TR2 RX 850, Zalman's 9900Max for cooling the CPU, and the CM690 Chassie (http://pumpgasracing.homestead.com/files/Comp/Defiant/990FXAUD5/running.jpg)

Link to picture if desired.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 23, 2011, 08:59:46 am: Your PC looks good! ;)

I think most people are waiting for the new AMD Processors to come along before they write their reviews.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: derobert on June 29, 2011, 11:52:52 am: Hi! What about this Ctrl+F problem when rebooting with raid? I use raid only so it is bothering me... Will it stuck on Ctrl+F screen on every reboot? Thanks!
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 29, 2011, 12:03:41 pm: Hi there,

when I tested the RAID I was using the F3 BIOS. I haven't experienced the same problem with the F5b Beta BIOS I am currently testing so I believe this issue has now been addressed and shouldn't cause any problem when the new BIOS is released.

As I stated in the review, the problem only happened if I rebooted. If I shutdown the PC and then restarted everything worked fine.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: derobert on June 29, 2011, 01:33:44 pm: Great! One more thing before i buy it: I want to use RAID 0 with 3 sata hdds plus 3 sata hdds out of raid, 1 dvd drive and 1 esata (ocasionally). Will this setting work? Maybe someone know?
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on June 29, 2011, 01:38:03 pm: Hi again,

you will be able to set RAID on the AMD SATA Controller and the 3 non-raided drives should operate in AHCI Mode. Attach the DVD drive to one of the Marvell SATA ports in IDE mode and then you still have two external eSATA ports available, operated by a separate Marvell Chip.

Another option would be to set up RAID on the AMD SATA ports SATA£_0 to SATA3_3 then set the AMD SATA3_4 and SATA3_5 ports to Native IDE. Attach your 3 HDD's for RAID to the SATA ports SATA3_0 to SATA3_2 and two of your non-raid HDD's to SATA3_4 & SATA3_5. You can then attach the third HDD to a Marvell SATA port along with your DVD.

So yes, you should be OK.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: derobert on June 29, 2011, 01:41:03 pm: Thanks absic! That was very helpful :) I will try to provide some speed tests when i get my own board.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: derobert on July 01, 2011, 03:16:31 pm: (http://wstaw.org/m/2011/07/01/1000.PNG)
(http://wstaw.org/m/2011/07/01/500.PNG)
(http://wstaw.org/m/2011/07/01/100.PNG)

that looks good i think... i used 3x Samsung Spinpoint F4 HD322GJ in RAID 0 and Windows drivers which, as u said, are better than drivers from AMD ;-)

Meantime on the other side of mother board... PCIE_16X slots ARE TOO CLOSE! My graphic card in slot 1 have a barely room to breathe! about 3mm! Its almost 70C temp in stanby... i must buy super long Crossfire connector and put one of cards in PCIE_8X slot to make a space for airflow :(
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on July 01, 2011, 03:39:51 pm: Hey, who needs SSD'd with figures like that?

Pleased you got the RAID up and running without too much trouble and it is nice to have it confirmed about the Microsoft drivers performing better over the AMD ones.

Yes, when running multiple GPU's the slot spacing does leave a little to be desired, especially if you wish to use both X16 lanes, but this seems to be the case with all motherboards if browsing the internet is anything to go by for multiple GPU set-ups.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Lordred on July 01, 2011, 05:01:59 pm: Quote from: absic on July 01, 2011, 03:39:51 pm
Hey, who needs SSD'd with figures like that?

Pleased you got the RAID up and running without too much trouble and it is nice to have it confirmed about the Microsoft drivers performing better over the AMD ones.

Yes, when running multiple GPU's the slot spacing does leave a little to be desired, especially if you wish to use both X16 lanes, but this seems to be the case with all motherboards if browsing the internet is anything to go by for multiple GPU set-ups.

Tis the case for all boards which support 3-way and 4-way, there are alot of 2-way boards which offer x16/x16 with a 3-slot spacing.

But the performance hit in running x16/x8 is at best only 1%. Even the GTX580 is unable to fully saturate a PCI-E 2.0 x8 config
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: derobert on July 02, 2011, 06:38:48 pm: Quote from: Lordred on July 01, 2011, 05:01:59 pm
But the performance hit in running x16/x8 is at best only 1%. Even the GTX580 is unable to fully saturate a PCI-E 2.0 x8 config
I red about a test of x4/x4 SLI and there was about 1-2% performance drop too 16x/16x, in some tests it was even better performance! ;-) But i must say that i tried yesterday both my 4890's in 16x/16x and top card was getting about 95C temp in benchmark.... I was so angry that i took one of the cards and put it on auction... I will buy single 6950 and thats all... argh i was so angry!
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Dark Mantis on July 02, 2011, 07:54:47 pm: Shame I would have been interested in how the two 4890s benched compared to some of the new cards.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: geekyadz on July 04, 2011, 01:19:43 pm: The board seems to get a good review here: http://www.ninjalane.com/reviews/motherboards/ga-990fxa-ud5/

They couldnt OC it as much as they like though (apparently)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: iSeries on July 04, 2011, 02:40:55 pm: 'Mid range', seems quite expensive for a mid range board to me lol.

No mention of vdroop in that review.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: ack65 on July 06, 2011, 02:44:42 am: i just got the UD5 this weekend. i am currently using a 1090T with a Prolimatech Megahalems. my previous board was an MSI 790FX-GD70, which was a rock solid board. the 1090T ran 4.141 Ghz on 1.44V, 2828 Mghz cpu/nb on 1.34V.

with the UD5 i am at 4.0 with the BIOS set to 1.45V, and this is where the disappointment begins. number one, why the huge .025V increments for v-core and cpu/nb voltage?
i am currently using Aida64 for monitoring, though HWmonitor reads the same...so, 1.45 vcore in BIOS, Aida64 reads 1.48V idle, and drops to 1.42V under stress testing. i have read enough about this issue with this board, unless a solution is forthcoming, there will be an rma in my future. my first Gigabyte board and i am unbelievably disappointed.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Dark Mantis on July 06, 2011, 09:01:48 am: As a bleeding edge user this sort of issue is bound to appear from time to time. I am, sure it is just a BIOS quirk that will be fixed soon enough but that is about par for the course. ;)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: teknology9 on July 14, 2011, 11:32:07 am: Hello Absic,

Where did you get them switches from PWR, Reset etc?

Thanks,

Teknology9
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on July 14, 2011, 11:52:10 am: Hi there,

I got these from Maplins for £4.99. Here's a link: http://www.maplin.co.uk/motherboard-testing-switch-set-98842 and I have to say it's the best money ever spent on computer bits! ;)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: teknology9 on July 14, 2011, 06:18:59 pm: Thanks for that Absic, I'll pop along to Maplins and pick up a set. I learnt a lot from your article, perhaps an update would be good when Bulldozer is launched just to see how the 990 FX boards perform.

Thanks,

Teknology9
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on July 14, 2011, 08:30:53 pm: There will be some further updates coming along, just got a bit sidetracked with other things.

I've still got to do a test of the Marvel SATA controller and I will definitely be doing some further updates when the new AM3+ processors hit the shelves.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: teknology9 on July 15, 2011, 10:11:31 am: Hello Absic,

Good to hear that. I have got my eye on the GA-990FX-UD7 because ofthe onboard on/ reset and clear cmos buttons as well as the LED display, good for troubleshooting.

Thanks,

Teknology9
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Dark Mantis on July 15, 2011, 01:39:25 pm: Yes all the onboard buttons are useful but the Clear CMOS button usually won't be suficient to clear it properly and you will still have to resort to removing the battery etc.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: teknology9 on July 15, 2011, 08:55:03 pm: Thanks for the info DM and here comes a newbie question!!! :) How do you get the OS on a pen drive, is it a download from the microsoft site?

Thanks,

Teknology9
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Dark Mantis on July 15, 2011, 09:42:12 pm: I believe that it is downloadable but you can make your own just by formatting a USB drive and then making it bootable before copying the Windows install files to it off your disk.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: derobert on July 20, 2011, 09:43:09 pm: Quote from: Dark Mantis on July 02, 2011, 07:54:47 pm
Shame I would have been interested in how the two 4890s benched compared to some of the new cards.
ah i am so sorry for my rush on that. I have 6950 now ;) But i do remember that in Future mark vantage, in performance mode with resolution changed to my native 1680x1050 i had ~14500 gpu score. Hope this helps ;)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Dark Mantis on July 21, 2011, 09:19:40 am: Hi

Thanks for the update and info. It was not important just a case of interested how one would compare against the other. ;)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on July 26, 2011, 02:59:21 pm: I have just added some information with regard to the Marvell 88SE9172 SATA Controller here: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,5704.msg45817.html#msg45817
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on July 27, 2011, 04:19:37 pm: And I have gone through setting up a RAID Array on the Marvell SATA Controller here: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,5704.msg45818.html#msg45818
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: bw on August 01, 2011, 01:47:44 pm: 990FXA-UD5 is my 1st AMD board for maybe 4 years and I'm really happy to see how it's running. No problems with stability etc but there are still some issues that are comming back in different topics like unlocking cpu cores and amd raid performance. Have hope that both will be solved soon and for now just wanted to share with some results. Screenshots from my 24/7 pc , running like that for 2 weeks now ( Raid 0 on 2x M4 64GB / write back ).
Just 1 question if anyone was trying to set memory stable @2000 or more on this board ? I'm using 4x 2GB Dominators GT 2000C8 that are making up to 2250 on P67 boards but here no luck with more than ~1800.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on August 01, 2011, 02:05:08 pm: Hi there,

The higher specified RAM Speeds are really only going to be applicable to the new AM3+ Processors when they come along as the memory controllers on theseshouldl be able to run at 1866MHz by default.

If you are running an AM3 processor then you need to be careful about running your RAM above 1333MHz. Check here for more info on that: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2515.0.html
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on August 06, 2011, 01:30:53 pm: Just added a little more light reading to this review here: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,5704.msg45819.html#msg45819

It's some figures I got from testing the AMD and Marvell controllers with a couple of ADATA 60GB S511 6GB/s SSD's.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: bw on August 10, 2011, 09:59:26 am: Thanks for update, it can save me some time trying Marvell that I still didn't touch ;)
Your read transfers seem low but I saw others with similar results on Agility 3 60GB so maybe it's ok for SF controller ... did you try RAIDXpert array settings like NCQ ( it's disabled by default or at least I had it after setting raids on ssd ) , cache options etc ? I noticed that while using no cache/write through I have sometimes better read/sequential transfers but all other are much lower. While using Read Cache/Write Back most transfers are best. Read Ahead gives a bit better sequential read transfers than Read Cache option but sometimes can notice drop in write transfers or 512k Crystal test.
I have to test again my raid on MS drivers as your max transfers are much better than on AMD driver. This driver is just asking fo update ;) It's good to see that's not controller limitation.

Added my single M4/64GB result ( producers declared is 415/95 MB/s )

Edit:
Now I noticed that there is new version of AMD RAID driver http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx
Did you try latest in your tests ? ( can't find info about it )
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on August 10, 2011, 10:07:11 am: Hi there,

for some reason I couldn't get AMD RaidXpert to run properly and put it down to not having installed the AMD Drivers. Also, I am not sure as to why I was getting the lower read speeds than I had anticipated from the ADATA drive(s) but, as I said, this is my first proper hands-on experience with SSD's so I'm still learning.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: ferjero989 on August 10, 2011, 11:13:26 pm: hello there
im looking for a board with 6+2 Sata ports.
my plan is raid 0 with 2x ssd drives and a raid 5 with 6x500gb drives
will all 6 sata ports in this board support such config, cuz i noticed that the bios puts the 4/5 sata port a a separated set for dvdroms or drives that are not part of the raid.

also, any recomendations for ssd drives, just for windows and regular apps, my games will be installed on the raid 5.
i read about ppl having problems getting the marvel to recognize SOME specific ssd drives
so far my choice was SLD3-25SAT3-60G
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on August 11, 2011, 08:18:54 am: Hi there,
I'm sorry to say this but I don't think the GA-990FXA-UD5 will be fit for what you are planning to do.

If you are looking for a motherboard with AM3+ support and the features you are needing then I would suggest you take a closer look at the GA-890FXA-UD5 rev 3.1 as this board would do a better job. You can check it out here: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3781&dl=1#ov
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: bw on August 11, 2011, 01:23:10 pm: Quote from: ferjero989 on August 10, 2011, 11:13:26 pm
...
also, any recomendations for ssd drives, just for windows and regular apps, my games will be installed on the raid 5.
i read about ppl having problems getting the marvel to recognize SOME specific ssd drives
so far my choice was SLD3-25SAT3-60G

I'm not recommending OCZ/Sandforce SSD as many people have problems with stability on different boards. All that you read in the web, different reviews etc are just fast bandwidth tests where noone will say straight that all is stable but all will show best sequential transfers. I had Agility 3 60GB and after 1 month fighting with it and 1 month RMA i changed it to Crucial M4. Now I have 2x M4 64GB running in RAID without any problems on 2nd board. I'm not saying that all OCZ/Sandforce ssd are faulty, its more firmware issue that still haven't been fixed right. Some users are saying that all is working fine but with different luck your system can hang up or give blue screens from time to time. Issues are mainly with new Intel chipsets but AMD users were also complaining. Read some more on OCZ forums before you decide.
Generally you will see biggest boost in games installing them on SSD so optimal seems games+system on ssd and other stuff on hdd. You can always get 1x 120GB SSD ( should be faster in random transfers than 2x 60GB ) + 3x 1TB HDD in RAID5 or just 4x 1TB in RAID10 ( that is faster than RAID5 ).
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: bw on September 08, 2011, 11:50:30 am: Just as an info. There is no problem with memory on this board. I mean running in any config 1,2,3,4x 2GB and 4GB sticks. Fast test on 4x4GB G.Skill 1600 that is working now on 1.5V :)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on September 08, 2011, 12:09:37 pm: Yes, I noticed that memory compatability has been improved with the F5 BIOS.

I'm running 16 Gig of Corsair Vengeance LP Black 1600MHz 1.5V. With earlier BIOS version the PC wouldn't BOOT if I tried to run the RAM at it's rated speed but, with the F5, it runs OK.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: bw on September 08, 2011, 01:02:26 pm: I'm still on F5c.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: bw on October 11, 2011, 12:14:06 pm: there is new bios F6D on official site:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3891#bios

Update AGESA 1.1.0.0 code

Date is 2011/09/28 but I haven't seen it week ago.
I didn't even check official F5 and probably will test some more when I get BD.

Just wanted to let you know in case if anyone missed this update ;)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: bw on October 13, 2011, 12:52:19 pm: Quote from: bw on October 11, 2011, 12:14:06 pm
there is new bios F6D on official site:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3891#bios

Update AGESA 1.1.0.0 code

Date is 2011/09/28 but I haven't seen it week ago.
I didn't even check official F5 and probably will test some more when I get BD.

Just wanted to let you know in case if anyone missed this update ;)

It's weird to quote myself but can't find edit button so I wish only add that I tested F6D and it's fixing some SATA3 problems. For me it's +200MB/s in RAID0 on 2x M4 64GB
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Dark Mantis on October 14, 2011, 05:25:26 pm: Quote from: bw on October 13, 2011, 12:52:19 pm
Quote from: bw on October 11, 2011, 12:14:06 pm
there is new bios F6D on official site:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3891#bios

Update AGESA 1.1.0.0 code

Date is 2011/09/28 but I haven't seen it week ago.
I didn't even check official F5 and probably will test some more when I get BD.

Just wanted to let you know in case if anyone missed this update ;)

It's weird to quote myself but can't find edit button so I wish only add that I tested F6D and it's fixing some SATA3 problems. For me it's +200MB/s in RAID0 on 2x M4 64GB

You can't edit your post after 4 hours. So once written you have four hours to edit and do what you want to your post after which it becomes set in stone!
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: bw on October 18, 2011, 08:45:04 am: @Dark Mantis
thanks for info :)

Yesterday I got FX-8120 cpu and I have no big problems to boot @5GHz but under load I have so big vdrop that I can't even make stable 4.5GHz ( and I won't set voltage ~1.65V at idle ;) ). Vdrop is from about 0.1 to 0.2V. Even when I set something lower but cpu power exceedes 125W then throttling is turning on and clocks are dropping to about 2.8GHz. I haven't seen cpu temps above 59*C so it's not cooling for sure.
I know there is beta bios for UD7 board with LLC options ( that is almost the same as UD5 ) and there is some way to turn off throttling ( I saw somewhere soft fix but don't remember where :( ).
If anyone have beta bios fixing some from above issues please post or pm me.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on October 18, 2011, 09:57:33 am: Have you tried the latest F6 BIOS from the download page? http://uk.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3891&dl=1#bios
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: bw on October 18, 2011, 02:17:43 pm: I checked F6d and F6. I see no difference between these 2.
I found tip about throttling somewhere here -> http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/zardon/amd-fx-8150-black-edition-8-core-review-with-gigabyte-990fxa-ud7/24/
" ... Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 has no bios setting to disable APM (Application Power Management). Without this disabled, the motherboard will maintain the TDP limit when overclocking or overvolting above the limits. As a result APM will throttle some of the cores back to lower Pstates during heavy, multithreaded workloads reducing performance.
...
To get around this, we have to use AMD OverDrive software. We enable TurboCore, apply, then disable TurboCore … this in effect also disables Application Power Management." I have to check that when I back home.

We will have to wait for new bios with LLC options. I sent mail to gigabyte today about beta with LLC...
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: derobert on October 19, 2011, 10:04:16 pm: Quote from: derobert on July 01, 2011, 03:16:31 pm
(http://wstaw.org/m/2011/07/01/100.PNG)

that looks good i think... i used 3x Samsung Spinpoint F4 HD322GJ in RAID 0 and Windows drivers which, as u said, are better than drivers from AMD ;-)

Hi its me again! I was boring and launched same crystalmark that i launched after fresh install of W7 on my raid.

Now its this:
(http://wstaw.org/m/2011/10/19/Przechwytywanie_.PNG)

Its almost 2 times slower! What on the earth happened? Can i diagnose it in some way? Will RAIDExpert help? I have still the same Windows AHCI Drivers (I think). It is cause of that disk have more files on it so it is getting slower? Plz help, it makes me sad :( One thing i changed is bios, i have newest F6.

And why the graph in HDTach is so much "up-down-up-down" (dont know how to say it in english). Does the drives have some sort of problem maintaining more steady speed?
(http://wstaw.org/m/2011/10/20/Przechwytywanie.PNG)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: bw on October 20, 2011, 07:58:21 am: Try latest AMD drivers. It looks like you have IDE mode and AHCI isn't working.
Go to BIOS , enable RAID5 and Install latest drivers from AMD site: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx

Today I got F7a beta bios from Gigabyte. Will check how it's working when I back from work.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on October 20, 2011, 08:12:21 am: Hi Derobert,

Overtime, as the RAID array fills with data, it will slow down but I wouldn't expect it to drop off by as much as nearly 50%. My first guess would be that it is due to the F6 BIOS and it might be worth going back to the F5 to see if that improves things again.

Also check your RAID settings haven't been altered when you flashed the BIOS, they shouldn't have done so but double check to make sure, especially with the stripe size that you are using as this may have defaulted to a lower setting.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: derobert on October 20, 2011, 10:21:27 pm: Hi guys, i just checked whats going on, so lets see:

When i enable "SATA RAID5 Support" and set "SATA Port 4/5 Type" on "As SATA Type", disk on SATA4 port won't be detected, SATA5 port is detected, then Windows crashes on loading and computer reboot. Something is clearly wrong... To boot to windows i must set sata4/5 on IDE and disable RAID5 support.

Update: i changed bios to F5 and now windows won't boot only when RAID5 is enabled. Disks are "as sata type" and Windows boots. I also confirm that Write/Read speeds changed to 340/399 on F5! There is definietly something wrong with F6 bios.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: bw on October 21, 2011, 09:53:28 am: When you enable RAID5 in bios then system is using other driver ( or at least it's looking for new devices that probably need a bit other driver ). When it won't find any good then probably wont boot. I just used the same profile that I had on F5, moved it to F6d and later moved it to F6 ( even that there is info that bios is different and it can fail etc ). All is working also on F7a beta but really I see no difference between F6 series and F7a so I don't know what they changed.
For me best is 2x SSD in raid0 on ports 2/3 , optical drive in IDE mode on 4/5.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: derobert on October 22, 2011, 01:17:23 pm: Quote from: bw on October 21, 2011, 09:53:28 am
For me best is 2x SSD in raid0 on ports 2/3 , optical drive in IDE mode on 4/5.

So you use SSD's? I have regular SATA2 drives, maybe there is the difference... Anyway absic told me that he had problems with F6 too so i am not the only one ;) Lets hope it will be fixed in F7. Can you send me this F7 bios? I will test it. Thanks.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: kiddi82 on November 03, 2011, 01:45:33 pm: Hi i have 990FXA-ud5 mobo, FX-8150 cpu, 4x4 gb corsair Vengeance @1866mhz and Mushkin Chronos 60GB SSD, there are 6 black and two gray SATA 3
ports on the mobo, can you please tell me in witch one i should put the SSD and how i should set up the BIOS for best peformance :)
thank you so much advance for help
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on November 03, 2011, 01:50:45 pm: Hi there,

Connect the SSD to the first black SATA port labelled SATA3_0. That's the bottom port furthest away from the RAM Slots

In BIOS under Integrated Peripherals set OnChip SATA Type to AHCI and OnChip SATA Port 4/5 Type to As SATA Type.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: kiddi82 on November 03, 2011, 01:53:34 pm: thank you so much for quick answer :D
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: kiddi82 on November 10, 2011, 02:46:12 pm: Hi again :) can you tell me one more thing, i have this CPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103472
can i use it to flash the BIOS on 990FXA-ud5 ? it´s not on the cpu support list but it is AM2+ cpu, will it work just to flah the BIOS
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on November 10, 2011, 02:57:43 pm: Hi again,

A nice idea but sadly the answer is no. You will need a CPU that is on the CPU Support list (probably not an FX processor at this stage as you will need F5 or above for these to be supported) to enable you to flash BIOS.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: kiddi82 on November 10, 2011, 02:59:47 pm: I was afraid of that :) thanks again
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: kiddi82 on December 03, 2011, 01:25:30 am: Hi once again ;D now the system is runing perfectly and im :D about it, but there is one thing, i have 16GB of Corsair vengeance 1866Mhz
and it is auto set to 1333Mhz but when i try to make them run on 1600 or 1866, i get some message about overclocking and it will not run at that speed..
can you tell me how to set up the BIOS to make them run atleast on 1600Mhz, (i have BIOS ver: F6)
thanks advanced Kiddi :)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on December 03, 2011, 08:58:11 am: Hi Kiddi,

the first thing I would do is update to the latest F7g BIOS, especially as if I remember correctly you are now running an FX8120 CPU and this BIOS has new code for it. Use QFlash to update the BIOS and remember to disable the "Keep DMI Data" option on teh QFlash homescreen befor eyou actually run the update.

Once you have updated the BIOS you will need to manually set the speed for your RAM and you do this by changing the option under the MIT Section of BIOS named Set Memory Clock. For 1600MHz RAM you need to change this to X8 and you may also need to change the voltage. If you could post back with a link to the RAM Kit you have it would be easier to advise you on this.

If you will actually get the RAM to run at it's rated speed of 1866MHz is a tricky question, especially if your kit is made up of four RAM Modules. You may like to read this post: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,7530.0.html to understand why this is the case.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: kiddi82 on December 03, 2011, 01:30:36 pm: yes okey thanks :) i have FX-8150 cpu and this is the ram, i have two kit like these http://www.corsair.com/memory/intel-memory-upgrades/dual-channel-intel-memory-upgrade-kits/vengeance-8gb-dual-channel-ddr3-memory-kit-cmz8gx3m2a1866c9r.html
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on December 03, 2011, 01:43:51 pm: OK, your RAM should run at 1600MHz at 1.5V but I don't think it will be easy to get it to run above this speed with all four sticks as they are not a matched kit. You may also find that you need to manually set the RAM timings to match the figures on the packaging to get full stability.

Checking the spec's from the link you provided they are guaranteed to work as a single matched kit (2 x 4GB sticks of RAM) but only on the Intel platform and because of this you may have to settle for 16GB running at 1600MHz or 8GB running at the higher speed.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: kiddi82 on December 03, 2011, 01:51:50 pm: ahh i see 1600Mhz is fair enough, but when you are talking about seting the timings, are you talking about this 9-10-9-27
do i have to set this right in BIOS ?
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on December 03, 2011, 01:57:21 pm: yes, that's what we are talking about when we mention timings.
You might find that setting these to 9,10,9,24 will be fine for 1600MHz (although these are the ratings for 1866MHz) but you may be able to tighten them a little to 9,9,9,24 for example at 1600MHz. You may need to experiment a bit with the timings to find the optimum settings for your particular RAM Modules.

However, you shouldn't need to adjust the voltage, even with all four sticks on-board which is always a good thing.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: kiddi82 on December 03, 2011, 02:00:49 pm: yes okey :) thanks
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: mtekin8 on December 07, 2011, 09:52:20 pm: Hi 990FXA-UD5 motherboard, video card, processor, case fans running but the monitor does not display.
What is the problem or who live in this helpful was the problem?
I'm sorry my English is very bad
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: AxisEdge on December 21, 2011, 06:52:45 pm: hi! i've just bought this great mobo but im wondering why my northbridge is way hot on idle? just cant overclock it because it crashes every time the tmpin2 goes above 60c? im using bios F6

Phenom II 955 @ stock 1.38v
Coolermaster Hyper 212+ push/pull config
Sapphire 5850 Xtreme @ stock
NZXT Source 220 Elite
FSP Aurum 600w

(http://i979.photobucket.com/albums/ae277/alvineric/nbhot.jpg?t=1324493511)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: MiiCK on December 27, 2011, 03:52:43 pm: Just read through this thread, very nice read absic, thanks! ;D
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on December 31, 2011, 07:54:58 am: Thanks for your comments. It's nice to know what other forum members think of such reviews.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Dark Mantis on December 31, 2011, 02:57:29 pm: To be honest I think it is an excellent review and certainly helps a lot of members especially if they are attempting their first build. ;)
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: derobert on January 29, 2012, 07:15:25 pm: Hi, i have a second thoughts about bios F7h, today it happend third time:

Computer do not power up when pressing power button. Old trick with unplugging power cable and holding power button for 30 sec helps. Then i have this:

(http://wstaw.org/m/2012/01/29/2012-01-29_19.35.13.jpg)

and then i must set all settings in bios (raid etc), Windows 7 boots up, ALL DRIVERS are being reinstalled and i must restart computer. I was angry that it happened third time already so i switched back on F6. We will see if it happen agin. Also i discovered that on F7h computer randomly boots up himself even when i turn off all usb wakeup options etc...
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Dark Mantis on January 29, 2012, 08:12:00 pm: It is possible that ther BIOS file is faulty or corrupt leaving you with a BIOS that can't load. Did you use @BIOS to run the update ?
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: derobert on January 29, 2012, 08:28:06 pm: no, i always update from Qflash in DOS
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Dark Mantis on January 30, 2012, 10:45:59 am: It still sounds like a corrupt BIOS file for whatever reason. I would suggest updating the BIOS to the latest version and then checking it is sound. If so you can then synchronise the two BIOS versions.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: derobert on January 30, 2012, 09:43:33 pm: Hi, what exactly do You mean by synchronize bios? Today it happened again! It was F6 bios now, so i think maybe motherboard is faulty? I didnt fully diagnosed it yet. Only one thing i can tell is that when this happens i have always hibernated system and computer was plugged in power - but i dont know what it might have in common. I will try to shutdown windows and unplug the cord from power, then we will see whats next.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: derobert on February 10, 2012, 11:05:40 am: What is the newest unofficial bios for this board? something newer than F7h?
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: goldfinchFX on March 18, 2012, 10:13:49 pm: Yes, there's something newer than F7h. You can get version F7j (which includes a new AMD AHCI Option ROM) in the german forum. You can follow this link http://forum.gigabyte.de/index.php?page=Thread&postID=55028#post55028.
I've updated my BIOS and it seems to be more stable than the older one.

Edit: By the way it's a great review!
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Dark Mantis on March 20, 2012, 08:04:53 am: Quote from: derobert on January 30, 2012, 09:43:33 pm
Hi, what exactly do You mean by synchronize bios? Today it happened again! It was F6 bios now, so i think maybe motherboard is faulty? I didnt fully diagnosed it yet. Only one thing i can tell is that when this happens i have always hibernated system and computer was plugged in power - but i dont know what it might have in common. I will try to shutdown windows and unplug the cord from power, then we will see whats next.

From a cold start with the power to the machine switched off press the power button and then enter the BIOS by pressing Del. Then when you get to the main screen press F9. This will bring up an extra screen which will display more information about the two BIOS versions. Assuming they are different exit the BIOS and shutdown. Again press the power button and this time press Alt + F12 where you would normally use the Del key to enter the BIOS. You will find that then your monitor will turn black and you will see:

Press [Enter] to start copying main BIOS to backup BIOS...

When you press Enter more text will appear saying:

Writing BIOS image.... xxxKb OK

Once completed more text will show:

BIOS successfully recovered! Power off or reset system!

Do as it says. Both Main and Backup BIOS chips now store the same BIOS version. You can now reboot as normal.

When you copy the first BIOS image to the second BIOS it also copies the current configuration
so if you use RAID or something, set it before the copy. It also copies over any saved profiles too.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: t0tal3d on August 24, 2012, 08:49:32 am: What bios version did you use for SSD Raid 0 array?
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on August 24, 2012, 01:23:31 pm: Hi there,

it was the F6 BIOS (available from here: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3891&dl=1#bios ) Although I am currently running the F9 BIOS without issue on the RAID 0 Array with SSD's.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: t0tal3d on August 24, 2012, 11:51:34 pm: Quote from: absic on August 24, 2012, 01:23:31 pm
Hi there,

it was the F6 BIOS (available from here: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3891&dl=1#bios ) Although I am currently running the F9 BIOS without issue on the RAID 0 Array with SSD's.

Hello All,

Just thought i would post my experiences on this board. First up its the first board where ive ever experienced the slow boot after bios/before logon screen.

Have tried bios versions F4 to Current F10 Beta bios (currently F9 is giving the best results)
Bios settings:
AMD ports
RAID enabled
Ports 4/5 as SATA type
RAID 5 support enabled (allows more speed for each Sata port)
Disabled esata
Disabled gsata

Disabled boot logo
Disabled all but primary boot device SSD array
No OC at all.

Through multiple fresh installs on an intel ssd 520 60GG raid 0 array, at first with default MS drivers - poor performance around 400mbps or less
This is on a standard 64kb stripe via amd raid configuration utility after bios.
Also tried the AMD drivers - latest from: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx (http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx)
Still not much improvement.

Using windows backup & acronis true home image plus back (boot CD with universal restore enabled so it defaults back to MS drivers) i tried multiple restores to 64kb stripe, 128kb strip and 256kb stripe, all with fast initialization on (default).

Needless to say the best i could get was Read of 668.41 MB/s & Write 158.15MB/s - which is an OKish middle ground considering previous attempts.
However its still quite short of max performance of 550 MB/s Read & 500 MB/s Write per drive.

Finally, after talking to absic, he confirmed that were was no known work around for the boot time side of things - after bios but before windows actually loads. Raid setup does the standard 5 dots ( . . . . . ) while it detects, then it goes to custard. flashing cursor in top left corner ( - ) for about 10 seconds.
Then windows kicks in, takes about 20 seconds just to load that part. Overall boot time is about 60 seconds as the pre bios loading is quite slow too.

For anyone who is experiencing this, it does look like the chip sets responsible for all the issues, speed and slow boot times as on 880 chip set boards, or totally unrelated chip sets these issues vanish

Lesson learnt, AMD has failed on this chipset.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: Sammy on August 18, 2013, 10:04:29 am: Where did you get that ATX Control Kit by "HighSpeedPC" (the LEDs and switches)?
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on August 18, 2013, 10:11:55 am: I bought this kit from a local Maplins shop for £4.99. Best money I have spent on PC parts. If you are in UK you can find it here: http://www.maplin.co.uk/motherboard-testing-switch-set-98842
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: soybomber on October 07, 2015, 01:51:28 am: hey, i know this is an old thread, but i have a question that doesnt seem to be answered clearly...
about to build machine based around this board
if my main disk with OS is two SSD in raid0, should i use the marvell controller, or the amd controller?
if amd controller, should i use sata3_0 and sata3_1 for the two ssd?
and should i flash my bios to latest before i actually start my raid array?
hope OP is still around!

PS, this is the most insightful board review i have ever seen! wish all boards had living reviews!
thanks so much!
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on October 07, 2015, 06:00:51 am: Hi there,

I would recommend using the AMD controller for your RAID array, using the SATA ports you have stated.

When it comes to the BIOS I would also update this to the latest version prior to actually building your PC and setting things up.
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: soybomber on October 14, 2015, 11:44:40 pm: thank you so much BTW. i got everything going. cant install windows 7 though. windows doesnt recognize the raid array, and asks for drivers. refusing the ones ive downloaded from gigabyte's site. this is driving me crazy. not sure how you did it yourself so easily
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on October 15, 2015, 01:11:33 pm: Sorry to see you are having problems.

A couple of quick questions for you:
What revision is your motherboard?
Is the BIOS UEFI?
Are you trying to install the OS from a DVD or via a USB pendrive?
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: soybomber on October 15, 2015, 05:38:26 pm: MB is rev 3.1. bios is UEFI. first tried installing from pirate win7 on usb. no luck. so bought win7 home premium 64. same problem. since i built this rig in a very tight 3u server case and didnt want to take everything apart (yes, i know i should have tested everything before installing in case. live and learn), so i have left the raid array on first two amd sata connections, and set up the dvd on external usb connection (seems to work fine), and have tried first, a new seagate 4tb drive on the marvell controller(windows saw it, but wouldnt install on it), then thinking maybe the drive was too big and new to use, swapped it with an old working 600gb drive. wiped it, put on new partition and formated... no luck.
"setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing partition. see the setup log files for more information"

i had really hoped that i could install windows on the HDD, install drivers for raid array. copy boot drive image onto raid array, and go from there. but i cant seem to install on anything.

thanks for taking the time to help BTW
Title: Re: GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review
Post by: absic on October 15, 2015, 07:15:58 pm: Soybomber, please check your PM's